Книга: Distributed operating systems

2.2.2. The ATM Physical Layer

2.2.2. The ATM Physical Layer

An ATM adaptor board plugged into a computer can put out a stream of cells onto a wire or fiber. The transmission stream must be continuous. When there are no data to be sent, empty cells are transmitted, which means that in the physical layer, ATM is really synchronous, not asynchronous. Within a virtual circuit, however, it is asynchronous.

Alternatively, the adaptor board can use SONET (Synchronous Optical NETwork) in the physical layer, putting its cells into the payload portion of SONET frames. The virtue of this approach is compatibility with the internal transmission system of AT&T and other carriers that use SONET. In Europe, a system called SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) that is closely patterned after SONET is available in some countries.

In SONET, the basic unit (analogous to a 193-bit T1 frame) is a 9?90 array of bytes called a frame. Of these 810 bytes, 36 bytes are overhead, leaving 774 bytes of payload. One frame is transmitted every 125 ?sec, to match the telephone system's standard sampling rate of 8000 samples/sec, so the gross data rate (including overhead) is 51.840 Mbps and the net data rate (excluding overhead) is 49.536 Mbps.

These parameters were chosen after five years of tortuous negotiation between U.S., European, Japanese, and other telephone companies in order to handle the U.S. T3 data stream (44.736 Mbps) and the standards used by other countries. The computer industry did not play a significant role here (a 9?90 array with 36 bytes of overhead is not something a computer scientist is likely to propose).

The basic 51.840-Mbps channel is called OC-1. It is possible to send a group of n OC-1 frames as a group, which is designated OC-n when it is used for n independent OC-1 channels and OC-n c (for concatenated) when used for a single high-speed channel. Standards have been established for OC-3, OC-12, OC-48, and OC-192. The most important of these for ATM are OC-3c, at 155.520 Mbps and OC-12c, at 622.080 Mbps, because computers can probably produce data at these rates in the near future. For long-haul transmission within the telephone system, OC-12 and OC-48 are the most widely used at present.

OC-3c SONET adaptors for computers are now available to allow a computer to output SONET frames directly. OC-12c is expected shortly. Since even OC-1 is overkill for a telephone, it is unlikely that many audio telephones will ever speak ATM or SONET directly (ISDN will be used instead), but for videophones ATM and SONET are ideal.

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